Page 20 of Her Cruel Redemption

Mae paused to fall into step beside me, touching my arm. ‘Keep it down. They’re hunting us.’

Those words sent chills of fear scampering across my skin, quickening my pace as well as my pulse. ‘How do you know?’

‘I can feel them,’ she replied, and suddenly their magic, that ability to reach out and sense each other, felt a whole lot more useful than I’d ever thought. Her hand remained on my arm, slowing my steps. ‘Don’t run, or they’ll give chase. We have to stay together and stay calm. They’re less likely to strike when we’re in a group.’

‘What do we do?’ The words came out as little more than a hasty breath.

‘Just keep moving.’

My heart fluttered like a moth at a window as I tried to do as I was told, tried to keep my pace measured while my every instinct was screaming at me to run. I could feel it myself now, that sense that we were being watched tingling down the back of my neck.

A cry behind us snapped at my calm and I whipped around, already bracing myself for blood, for flashing teeth. Daethie was on the ground, having tripped over a rogue branch. Kelvhan had turned back, reaching out to help her up. And behind them both, the glint of eyes, the silhouette of a shape. A low, huffing growl. Kel grabbed Daethie’s arm, pulling her to her feet. They both stumbled forwards, and the eyes sunk closer to the ground as the creature crouched low.

Mae was tugging on my arm. ‘Now we run!’

We surged into a stumbling dash, dodging trees, tripping on stones, my sight fixed on Mae’s back as I tried to follow her, tried to tune out the screaming panic that had me by the throat, choking my breath.

The growling had grown into a snarl behind us, joined by one to the left where I wouldn’t dare to look, only veering away from the sound as much as I could without losing the others completely. Mae was just a flash of pale pink dress and purple headband before me, dipping in and out of sight as she wove between the trees. The ground was uneven, sharp stones biting into my shoes, and I stumbled. My knee jarred as I hit the dirt, but I ignored it as I pulled myself up. Too slowly. Too late. Movement flashed to my right, and suddenly one of the creatures was before me, as terrifying as I remembered it. Flat, lizard-like nose, feline skull, wicked thorns running down the back of its neck, wings flared out either side and huge, luminous yellow eyes with slitted pupils. It opened its jaws in a vicious snarl, before lunging forwards. I screamed, dodging it by a breath. Jaws snapped on empty air and I was running faster than I’d ever run in my life, but where were the others? I couldn’t see them! Had they left me to fend for myself? But no, there was Daethie, pushing past me, wide eyes flashing in my direction, and Kelvhan gesturing wildly at me to follow. As though I needed the encouragement.

‘This way!’ I heard Elias call from up ahead. ‘There’s a rockface. We can hide!’

I had no idea how rock would help us when it seemed only like a good way to wind up cornered, but I pushed harder, following Daethie and Kel. She was flagging, I realised. Hobbled with a frantic limp. She had an arm through Kel’s and he was trying to help her. I took a hold of her other arm and looped it around my shoulders, and together we all but lifted her from the floor. And there, up ahead, I could see the others surging towards a towering rockface, the wall of the gorge, and in that wall a dark slit of space. I hoped Elias knew what he was about, because there’d be nowhere else to run in there.

We barely slowed down as we reached the crack. Elias and Gwin vanished inside first. Goras paused by the entrance like he was braced to fight the beasts as Tanathil slid past him. I stuffed Daethie in before me, turning her shoulders to fit, and as she disappeared into the dark I followed her, wriggling through, scraping my arms, the adrenaline of the chase immediately compounded by the panic of being in so tight a space. But I kept moving, praying that the crack was deep enough to fit us all. Kel was grunting and muttering right behind me as he attempted to scrape himself through the narrow space, and just as my panic surged again at the thought of being stuck in here, the rock widened. I stumbled forwards, throwing my hands out and catching what I thought was Gwinellyn from the sound of the gasp she made as I thumped into her.

The thick, dusty air rumbled with another grating snarl as I found wall, pressed myself against it with people crammed either side of me, making room for Gors and Kel to cram in as well. The wedge of light that was the opening flickered and wavered with movement as the snarling continued, and as my eyes adjusted I realised it was the leozaurs reaching in, swiping at us with their massive paws, growling their frustration as they couldn’t reach us. Those barrel chests, those huge leathery wings made it impossible for them to fit.

‘How did you know they’d get stuck?’ I asked Elias in a whisper, bubbles of hysteria rising in my chest. I felt like laughing. Which was mad. We were still trapped.

‘I didn’t,’ he replied.

‘I’m glad I didn’t know that before I squeezed inside.’ I was still too flooded with adrenaline to even imagine being trapped in herewiththe creatures. Especially not when they were huffing and clawing at the entrance. ‘Now what?’

‘We wait. They’re as easily bored as they are curious. If we don’t do anything interesting for long enough, they’ll leave us alone.’ Mae’s voice threaded through the dark, identifying herself as one of the silhouettes squashed to my left, almost swallowed by Goras’s hulking form.

‘Wonderful,’ I muttered. The air was stale and thick in here, and only becoming more so with the eight of us breathing away.

‘Can we get a little wriggle room up the front there? Some of us are crammed into Kel’s armpit.’ Tan’s words were distinctly muffled.

‘There’s plenty of room in front if you want to trade an armpit for a Leozaur’s mouth,’ Kel replied.

As though to remind us that they were still there, another growl rumbled through the air, seeming to almost shake the stone around us.

I realised Daethie was leaning heavily on me, her breathing laboured. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked her, shifting my stance so the wall would take more of our weight.

‘Oh, I’m alright, I’ve had worse,’ she said, though she didn’t sound alright. ‘You helped me.’ There was a lick of surprise in the way she said it that made me bristle.

‘Did you think I’d let you and Kel get eaten?’

‘Perhaps.’

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. Just focused on watching that shifting light at the mouth of the crevice that indicated the leozaurs were still pacing.

Time passed. We kept quiet, hoping to provide no entertainment for our hunters, though Tanathil kept whispering riddles and trying to get us to guess the answers. Gwinellyn and Elias were clearly squashed in next to each other and content to be so, murmuring to each other in voices too low for me to make out the words, their tone a caress in the dark. Something in my chest twisted and ached at the sound. I smothered the feeling, unwilling to attend to it. To name it.

The stillness was the first sign that we’d been left alone. Then the quiet. The rumbling growls grew fainter, further between, until they died away completely.

‘Are they gone?’ Gwin whispered.

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